Dakota Run

Chapter Fourteen

“Die!”

He towered above the others in the expansive chamber, this lean, brooding skeleton of a man. His broad shoulders, covered by a knee-length white smock, were set arrow straight, his delicate fingers clasped behind his back. The small speaker on the console in front of him conveyed the sounds of the conflict and he smiled, revealing two rows of tiny teeth, teeth curiously thin and pointed. His eyes were placed deep in their sockets and seemed to blaze with fiery inner light, although in reality they were an unfathomable black. The top of his sloping head was completely bald, but the sides still retained long wisps of fine white hair. His figure presented an amazing paradox; it appeared incredibly ancient and yet immensely powerful simultaneously.

A young man in a green uniform dutifully approached and stood at attention.

The eerie one in the smock slowly turned. “Yes, Captain?” he asked, his voice a resonant rumble in his chest.

The frightened captain swallowed hard. “I beg your pardon for disturbing you, sir.”

“Quite all right,” the tall man stated. He nodded at the speaker. “You’re not interrupting anything important.”

The captain could distinctly detect the sounds of combat emanating from the speaker in the bank of electronic equipment and his eyebrows arched.

“What you hear,” the first man continued, “is the end of a nuisance, the termination of a particularly troublesome thorn in my side.” He stared into the captain’s brown eyes. “And we both know how I deal with those who oppose me, don’t we?”

The captain was too wise to reply.

“Now, what may I do for you?” demanded the one in the smock. His right hand flicked a switch on the board and the speaker went dead.

The captain cleared his throat. “I’m from Communications, sir.”

“I know,” affirmed the tall man. “Captain Miller, isn’t it? You’ve been at the Citadel only two weeks, correct?”

“Yes, Doktor,” Captain Miller replied. How did the fiend do it?

Scuttlebutt had it the Doktor was endowed with a startlingly efficient photographic memory. Rumor also was that he read the new Personnel Report for the entire Citadel each week and memorized its contents!

“I’m waiting,” the Doktor said.

The captain raised the message in his left hand.

“What have we now?” the Doktor muttered and took the message.

Although the typed copy on the yellow teletype paper was twenty lines long, the Doktor read the contents in the time it took the captain to blink once.

Captain Miller felt his skin crawl. He fervently wished he were anywhere but in the freak room at the moment.

The Doktor abruptly hissed and crumpled the message into a ball.

“Damn infantile idiot!” he snapped. “He is positive proof that stupidity is genetically inherited!”

A clammy sweat broke out all over the captain’s body.

The Doktor glared at the officer. “Does the fool think I make these suggestions for my health? He doesn’t realize the danger!”

Mustering his courage, Captain Miller ventured to speak. “I was told to await your reply, sir.”

“I’ll provide you with a reply,” the Doktor growled. “You will transmit a one word response to him.”

“What word is that, sir?”

“No!” the Doktor roared.

Captain Miller recognized the symptoms. The Doktor was in one of his infamous rages, and the slightest upsetting remark, no matter how innocuous, might trigger his violent wrath.

“Are you familiar with the Family?” the Doktor unexpectedly inquired.

“I believe so, sir,” Captain Miller politely answered. “I’ve seen dispatches on them from time to time. Aren’t they the outfit in Minnesota?”

“They are indeed,” the Doktor said. “And they constitute a supreme threat to the Civilized Zone.”

“The Family, sir? They only have six or seven dozen members. We could crush them easily,” Captain Miller commented, and instantly regretted his blundering indiscretion, appalled at the sheer fury displayed on the Doktor’s visage.

“You sound exactly like that fool Samuel!” the Doktor bellowed, livid. “I can’t seem to impress upon his pitiful semblance of intelligence how grave the danger is!” The Doktor checked himself, making a mighty effort to control his surging emotions.

“What is so hard to comprehend?” he asked Miller. “The threat the Family poses to our system, to the very fabric of our society, isn’t predicated on their relatively few numbers. Instead, the source of the danger is their value base, their moral and spiritual orientation. Do you see it now?”

Captain Miller timidly shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t see what you mean, sir.”

The Doktor sadly gazed at the cement floor, his shoulders slumping.

“I’m surrounded by incompetents! Once, just once, I’d enjoy encountering a person of true intellect.” He looked at Miller. “I will sum up their danger as succinctly as possible.” He paused. “The Family believes in God.”

“In God, sir?” Captain Miller laughed. “Everyone knows there isn’t any God.”

The Doktor seemed to suddenly grow in stature, to loom over the terrified officer. “You still don’t see it, do you? You know there isn’t any God. I realized a long, long time ago, when I was four years old, that the concept of a Supreme Being was inconsistent with observable reality. So you know it and I know it. But what about the ignorant masses? What about them?”

“The masses, sir? They know it’s illegal to believe in God.”

The Doktor’s eyes resembled blazing coals in an inferno. “And we both know they never break laws, right, Captain?”

Captain Miller lost all moisture in his mouth.

“Laws, Captain,” the Doktor declared, “maintain order in any society only so long as that society possesses the necessary military force to compel compliance. That’s why the ideal state is the police state. Every aspect of daily existence for the masses, from the moment they stumble from bed in the morning until their final fleeting thoughts before retiring, must be stringently controlled. Every nuance in their culture must be censored and constructively channeled along acceptable lines. Everything, from the food they ingest to the thoughts in their heads, must be only what is allowed, only what conforms to dictated doctrine. And all of this manipulation must be performed in such a manner, using whatever deception is required, as to present the illusion to the masses of freedom.

The secret to successfully governing the masses is not to let them know they are being controlled, and to convince them all laws are beneficial and enacted for the good of all the people. Do you understand this elementary civics lesson?”

“Yes, Doktor,” Captain Miller promptly replied.

“Good. Now follow me on this next part. If dominating the masses depends on their doing only what we want them to do and thinking only what we want them to think, what transpires when an alien concept is thrust into the social stream?”

“Sir?”

“For instance, our culture teaches there is no God. We inculate the precepts of atheistic humanism upon our citizens, because we rightly recognize the validity of humanism and the inferiority of other philosophical and religious beliefs. We instruct our people this life is all they get. There is no afterlife, no heaven and certainly no hell. Simply seventy short years and oblivion, eternal nothingness. We arouse them to fear the idea of dying, to view death with the utmost dread. By doing so, we inspire in them an urge to comply with our every edict because they know to do otherwise is to hasten their leap into the void. Have you followed me to this point?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. So what happens when a new idea enters the collective social consciousness? What will occur when the people begin believing in an afterlife? If they believe they will survive this life in the flesh, then they will not fear death any longer. And if they don’t dread dying, why should they listen to us? If they believe they are endowed with an immortal soul, let us say, and if they exercise faith in the promise of an everlasting life, they might come to view the thousands and thousands of laws our society has enacted as unnecessary, or even evil. For example, if they don’t fear dying, they won’t consider the consequences of a firing squad much of a deterrent for breaking our laws, will they?”

“No, Doktor.”

“Then hopefully you can begin to appreciate the threat this Family poses. Samuel can’t.” The Doktor frowned. “I have an important matter to attend to, Captain. Relay my response to Samuel and return with his reply. That is all.”

“Yes, sir,” Captain Miller said. He saluted, wheeled, and gratefully departed, mulling the Doktor’s words. For all his vaunted intellect, the Doktor was worried about nothing, making a mountain out of a molehill.

The Army, under Samuel’s direction, was the ruling class in the Civilized Zone, and the military commanders dominated the people with an iron fist. Samuel would crush any rebellion before the rebels knew what hit them. So why worry about some jerks who believed in God?

The Doktor watched the officer leave. He frowned and shook his head.

The juvenile imbecile, like that foppish Samuel, failed to comprehend the gravity of the situation. The Family must be eliminated, and the sooner the better.

“Blithering twit,” the Doktor muttered, still furious with Samuel for refusing his request to send a battalion to destroy the Home and capture the Family.

Not at this time, Samuel had wired!

Can’t spare the men!

Preparing for an offensive against the Cavalry and the Legion while the two sides remain separated!

The unmitigated stupidity of the man!

The Doktor pounded the equipment in front of him with his right fist.

If he didn’t detest the machinations of governmental office, if he didn’t loathe the thousand and one nitpicking details requiring daily attention and despise the whining syncophants invariably present at all levels of a governing regime, he’d wrest control of the Civilized Zone from Samuel and attend to the Family personally. Possibly later. Right now he had a critical matter to oversee. He stared at the backs of his hands, noting the deep wrinkles and the spreading lines, twice as many as were there the day before. Time was of the essence.

But first…

He bent over the console and turned on the speaker, listening, waiting to learn the outcome of the confrontation.

There was only static.

What had transpired? He glanced at a cabinet to his right and spotted the blinking blue light. Three rows of bulbs below the blue light was a flashing red light.

So!

The Doktor switched the speaker off and straightened. The Family could wait a while longer.

There were more important things to do.

He looked around the room and saw one of his assistants, a young woman with serpentine features, yellow skin, and narrow lavender eyes.

She stood before a table containing a rack of flasks and vials, examining a test tube, most of her body concealed by a white smock.

“Clarissa!” the Doktor called. “It’s time!”

Clarissa looked up, her forehead furrowed, her oily black bangs hanging over her right eyebrow.

“That’s right,” the Doktor affirmed. “It’s time again.”

Clarissa placed the test tube on the table. “Which sex this time Doktor?” she inquired.

The Doktor reflected a moment. “Bring me a girl this time. Not more than six months old, either. One of the Flatheads should suffice nicely.”

Clarissa nodded and moved toward a far door.

“And don’t forget the scalpel and the blood vat,” the Doktor reminded her.

“Certainly, Doktor,” Clarissa replied over her shoulder.

The Doktor grinned. In a few days he would be as good as new, and then he would travel to Denver and have a long talk with that cretin Samuel.

Sooner or later, one way or another, the Family was going to be erased from the face of the earth.

The Doktor almost laughed at the prospect.